![]() ![]() ![]() Yet, with a cliché not to be used lightly, "The Sinking of the Lusitania" was ahead of its time-years before the assembly lines of animation studios would attain such splendor. His last film, "Gertie the Dinosaur", drawn on rice paper before the advent of cel animation, was the most accomplished work of animation to date. As he had done with previous shorts, McCay produced a live-action introduction promoting his dedication and hard work. John Fitzsimmons and Apthorp Adams providing such as the waves with less monotony to the task, and McCay is supposed still to have created some 25,000 drawings for the production. By 1918, the celluloid animation process had been invented. McCay's masterpiece was surely as worthy propaganda as posters, as there was still fight to last a few more months. The sinking of the Lusitania, which carried munitions as well, swayed American sentiment, but not until Germany retracted its guarantee of not repeating the tragedy, among other issues of course, did the US ally. With that said, this is still very much worth seeing just for the passion that it displays.Īmerica had entered the war by the time Winsor McCay released this film. ![]() The previously mentioned tribute shows some of the famous people that died on the ship, which was somewhat questionable and especially since none of the other victims are even mentioned and no tribute is given to them. The long, complete shots of the ship are quite striking in their animated form and just watch the way that the smoke comes off of it. I think the greatest are the shots of the ship and the smoke coming from it. The animation of the boat sinking is quite simple on one hand but I'd argue there are still some very striking moments here. There's no question that the gloves are off as the title cards are quite damning to the actions that were done that day. There's no doubt that this was a very personal film to him and he clearly makes his feelings known by attacking Germany on pretty much every level. This is a fairly interesting film on many levels but the biggest is because of all the fire and passion that McCay brings to the material. The film clocks in at twelve-minutes and the animation is used to show what happened and then we're given actual footage talking about how evil Germany is and we also have a brief tribute to some of the men who were lost. This film documents the German attack on the Lusitania ship, which was carrying 2000 people when it was hit by a couple torpedoes and sank fifteen-minutes later. The Sinking of the Lusitania (1918) *** (out of 4) This WWI propaganda piece is from Winsor McCay, the famed animator who decided to use his skills and so something quite different. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |